In poker the aim of the game is to take down all the money in the middle, be it a little or a lot through bets and bluffs. However no matter how strong of a poker player you are you will end up making it to showdown with another player and you will need to turn up with the goods from time to time. It is at showdown where all cards are revealed and if you’re looking to win the pot more often than not you will have needed to connect with the cards in some way. The most common way to win a pot is simply with the highest pair! A pair is simply have two of the same card in your best 5 cards.
This could include using both, one, or none of the cards you were dealt. An example of this would be if you had a pair of 8’s and the cards that came out were A K 7 2 3, your best hand here would be A K 8 8 7 making a pair of 8’s! If you were dealt A8 and the flop was K 7 8 2 3 then again your best cards would be A K 8 87 so whether you have all or none of the cards in your starting hand doesn’t matter when it comes to showdown! If you’ve watched poker being played before it may seem like pairs are made all the time but they actually come out far less often than you would think! When you have any two random cards in your hand, for example an Ace and a King, the odds that you will make a pair on the flop (with the three community cards) is only about one in three.
Even If you were to make it all the way to the river with AK you still only make a pair slightly under half the time! This is why having a pair at showdown is a fairly strong hand and why it can often pick up the pot! While we all know that the bigger pair will win the pot it should be made aware that when two players have the same pair whoever has the highest card to go with that pair wins the pot.
So if there were two players, one with K8 and one with A8, on a J 9 8 2 3 board both players would have a pair of 8’s however the A8 hand would win the pot as it’s final hand is A J 9 8 8 which is slightly better than K J 9 8 8! This is why you will often see players betting with hands such as KJ and QJ and not so much with J2 and Q3 because the cards that accompanies the pair matters! The one paired hand is a decent hand in poker as it is only made about half the time, however it is on the low end of the made hands scale and if you want our advice try not to let the pot get too large when you’ve made your pair!1
